Johannesburg — BLACK South African investors own 18% of the available share capital in the top 100 companies listed on the JSE, according to the findings of a study released by the JSE yesterday.

Analysts said the study suggests that although transformation is taking place among SA's companies, it is happening at a much slower rate than expected, considering the fact that empowerment requirements have been in place for a decade.

The study comes amid widespread criticism that some companies, such as those in the mining sector, are still not meeting black economic empowerment targets.

"There has been much debate about black ownership on the JSE," said its CEO, Russell Loubser. "Various and quite divergent numbers have been mentioned.

"With the JSE's unparalleled access to share data, we wanted to enrich the debate through presenting the facts in an impartial manner," he said.

The analysis, which took five months to complete, was carried out by independent research house Trevor Chandler & Associates using actual shareholder data obtained from the share registers of listed companies.

The requirements of the government's codes of good practice were used to determine the empowerment ownership levels in companies.

Mr Chandler said the top 100 companies were also asked to provide their input, including providing their empowerment statistics. Companies were asked for audited or verified information and their annual reports were looked at, said Mr Chandler.

The study also found that 8% of share capital in the JSE's top 100 companies was directly owned by black people not taking into account the requirements of the codes of good practice.

Excluding foreign ownership, an estimated 36% of share capital is held by black shareholders. The current total market capitalisation for all companies listed on the JSE is R5,7-trillion, while for the top 100 companies it is R5,2-trillion.

Steven Hawes, the research and advisory manager at rating agency Empowerdex, said the agency carried out similar research in February among all companies listed on the JSE.

According to the Empowerdex study, 7% of share capital was directly owned by black people.

In 2008, a study carried out by Empowerdex estimated that between 13% and 15% of share capital was owned by black people. However, mandated investments were excluded.

"We feel that some progress is being made in respect of empowerment. It will be unfair to say that transformation is slow having regard to the fact that the codes of good practice are only three years old," Mr Hawes said.

Lisa Tait, executive vice-chairwoman at Transcend Corporate Advisors, said the research was extremely useful.

One of the reasons there were no facilitated data was that there was a lack of knowledge on the part of some verification agencies and stakeholders who did not fully understand the issues, she said. "This would exclude the top three verification agencies, Empowerdex, Nera and EmpowerLogic."

Mr Loubser said the JSE does not have accurate figures on retail investors as race segmentation was not a requirement when opening a brokerage account.